I just landed my first real job as a support technician. So far, every job that I have encountered has to do with the client’s computer not able to access the Internet. For obvious reasons, this problem is very frustrating. Sometimes clients call tech support from various companies, spending hours and getting no where. This pushes them to call professionals, and pay to have their problem fixed. Here are the steps that I follow when resolving this issue.

The second thing to do is to check the ISP’s end of the connection. Let us just say, in order for current high speed Internet access to work, there has to be a good “signal” in the modem in order to access Internet. Usually all green lights on the modem suggest that the signal is good. If they aren’t, there are two steps. First, is to unplug the modem and wait 10 seconds. Plug it back in. This restarts the modem, and usually can resolve a bad signal coming into the modem. If that still doesn’t work, it is time to call the Internet Service Provider. Have them check to see if everything is good on their end before it is time to proceed.

The third step in the process, is to reboot the router and check to see if the computer is communicating to the router. To reboot the router, just unplug and then plug in the router. Once all the lights are on, continue to the next step.

The next step is to ping the router. Go to start, run, and type cmd and press enter. Here, type ping 192.168.1.1 . This is a crucial step. This either tells the technician that the problem is either between the router and the modem, or the problem is between the computer and the router. If there are packets, this would suggest there is a problem between the router and the modem. If there are not packets, this would suggest there is a problem between the computer and router.

If the signal is good to the modem, and pinging the router receives packets, the next step is to access the router’s settings and refresh the modem information in the router. To do this, open an explorer window. Type 192.168.1.1 . After typing in the username and password for the router, the router settings are what is shown on the screen. Every router is different, so to refresh the settings there is no concrete method. What you are looking for, is a tab called DHCP renew. Renew the DHCP. If numbers change on the screen, there is a high possibility that you resolved the issue!

If pinging the router returned with no packets, and the connections are good, this would suggest a bad Ethernet cable or incorrect IP address assigning. You could either replace the Ethernet cable, or you could reassign an IP address to the NIC of the computer. To do this, go to start, run, type cmd and then press enter. Then type ipconfig /renew . This has the computer ask the router for IP address information.

At this point, it would not hurt to check Internet Explorer and make sure it is set up for DHCP.

With all of these steps done, now it is the time to point to faulty hardware or cables if Internet is still not acquired. The only way to test this is with known good parts. However, there is a built in utility to test the computer’s NIC. That is pinging the loopback address. If you ping 127.0.0.1 and you receive packets, that means the NIC is functioning correctly. If you do not receive packets, either the NIC is bad or the TCP/IP protocol stack has to be reinstalled.

If you follow these general steps, you can get your Internet up and running in no time.